Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Recently the Justice department has begun investigations into alleged anti-trust violations by Monsanto. This has helped fuel a lot of already hyped discontent with one of the world’s leaders in biotech solutions for sustainable agriculture. But why are people so anti-Monsanto and are these concerns unfounded? What makes Monsanto so powerful and so threatening in critics’ minds?

Despite the numerous amounts of research attesting to the safety of consuming Biotech foods many people still seek bans or increased regulation. Biotechnology largely represents the intersection of technology and capitalism. Since Monsanto is a leader in the biotech industry, it makes a great target for luddites and critics of market forces in general.

Now, truthfully, Monsanto did not come to be in a perfectly competitive purely capitalistic free market economy. No industry or corporation can make that claim in today’s heavily interventionist world, replete with regulations and public- private partnerships and the influence of special interests. Henry Miller and Gregory Conko point this out in their piece 'Freeing the Biotech Revolution:

'sadly, instead of demanding scientifically sound, risk-based regulation, some biotechnology firms have lobbied for this same kind of discriminatory, excessive government regulation in order to gain short-term advantages'

What is ironic is that many of the people cheering on the justice department’s investigation of Monsanto are the same people that want increased regulation and control of the economy in general, and especially the biotech industry. Why is this ironic? Because, these very proposals are what lead to ever more concentration and consolidation. Again Miller and Conko make an excellent point:

'In the end, EPA and the USDA regulatory policies place federal bureaucrats in the middle of virtually all field trials of gene-spliced plants, spelling disaster for small businesses and academic institutions whose scientists lack the resources to comply with burdensome, expensive, unnecessary regulation. The cost of field-testing gene-spliced plants is as much as 20-fold higher than for virtually identical plants crafted with older, less precise genetic techniques.' -Regulation, Summer 2003

Specifically, the mergers and acquisitions and increased concentration that we have seen in the ag biotech industry are largely the result of attempts to take advantage of economies of scale. Increased regulatory costs increase up front sunk costs. According to basic microeconomic theory, and Fulton and Giannakas (2001) research, these increased sunk costs create the possibilities of economies of scope and scale and increased industry consolidation in the biotech sector. Ollinger and Fernandez-Cornejo (1998) found that in the chemical pesticide industry that regulatory costs fell heavier on smaller firms and led to more concentration and fewer firms.

Those crying the loudest about more regulation have to accept that with it comes increased concentration and less competition. The policies they support help create the Monsantos of the world.

Defining and Measuring the Social Costs of Monopoly Power

The most ardent critics that want to build cases for ‘busting up’ big businesses often commit the fallacy of relying only on static analysis. Instead of looking ahead (which would be dynamic analysis) they maintain a short sighted, often politically motivated agenda. This could make society worse off in the long run.

Regulations can sometimes explicitly create monopolies (like the U.S. postal service) or they can create them indirectly like I mentioned above. I don’t think careful consideration is always given to the tradeoffs involved in those cases. However, tradeoffs are widely recognized when it comes to intellectual property rights and biotechnology. With intellectual property rights (like patents) temporary monopoly power is granted. This certainly may come with temporary social costs, but it allows researchers and investors to recoup their costs and provides incentives for increased R&D (although this point is debated among some economists, say for instance Stephan Kinsella's analysis here). In the long run, based on a dynamic view of monopoly, this paves the way for innovation in particular industries and improved standards of living for society at large. (For example biotechnology makes food more abundant, safer, leads to increased biodiversity, and is more sustainable see here for an annotated bibliography supporting these claims). Further, even if the tradeoffs of IP are not net positive, what we often find is that in the long run, technological change (driven by market forces) often leads to innovations that erode the market power of incumbent firms and their former technological advantages. In the short run there are also incentives for technology dissemination between firms.

“But, the AP found, access to Monsanto’s genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.

I should hope so. If Monsanto is giving away its technology and failing to protect its IP it is in serious trouble with its shareholders, among others. And never mind (and the AP reporter doesn’t) that Monsanto apparently licenses its technology broadly (I assume that 200 companies is broad in this market) rather than keeping it locked up for itself (the usual complaint about firms exercising their IP rights). Isn’t this how technology markets are supposed to work?”

Monsanto’s behavior appears to be consistent with what we would expect from a dynamically efficient system of intellectual property rights. While people may have different opinions about the optimal time period for setting patents, or even debate the merits of IP, that is different than punishing a company for its success based on a short term ‘static’ analysis of their behavior.

Some research even indicates that under the current regime, farmers can still benefit in the face of a monopolist supplier. When looking at the gains from biotechnology for Bt Cotton, research in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics found :

“The welfare framework explicitly recognizes that research protected by intellectual property rights generates monopoly profits, and makes it possible to partition these rents among consumers, farmers, and the innovating input firms. We calculate a total increase in world surplus of $240.3 million for 1996. Of this total, the largest share (59%) went to U.S. farmers.”

In conclusion, if we are concerned about monopoly power and market concentration in agriculture, we have to ask ourselves what policies are empowering these firms? It seems the loudest voices cheering on the government’s investigation of Monsanto also support the very policies that lead to industry consolidation to begin with. This seems all too familiar. The financial industry is the most heavily regulated industry in the United States. Add to that the interventions of the Federal Reserve through centrally planned interest rates, and we have created an industry incentivized to take extraordinary risks despite or as a result of in some cases) all of the regulations. When the industry came crashing down in 2008, many of the same advocates whose policies helped create the financial crisis also were the loudest to blame the industry for its ‘greed’ and ‘short sightedness.’ I think we are seeing something very similar with Monsanto, and I hope it doesn’t become an industry wide phenomenon. A financial crisis is bad enough, but we don’t need a food crisis.

“Antimicrobial Resistance: Implications for the Food System.” Doyle et al., Institute of Food Technologists Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, Vol.5, Issue 3, 2006ter for Molecular (safety of pharmaceutical technologies in food production in relation to antibiotic use in livestock)

"Microbiological Quality of Ground Beef From Conventionally-Reared Cattle and "Raised without Antibiotics" Label Claims"Journal of Food Protection, July 2004,Vol 67 Issue 7 p. 1433-1437 (factors other than the sub therapeutic use of antibiotics in beef production contribute to antimicrobial resistant bacteria in ground beef)

San Diego Center for Molecular Agriculture:Foods from Genetically Modified Crops ( pdf) (summary of environmental and health benefits of biotechnology)

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Disclaimer:This is for demonstration purposes only. There were actually 643 members of the #AgChat Facebook group to date, but the ‘members to .csv’ ap limits data retrieval to 499 observations, so this represents only a sampling of actual members. Observations are also omitted for missing values for variables in each respective analysis. For instance, only 24 observations of the available 499 had hometown data listed.

About Me

My primary interests are in applied econometrics with applications related to genomics, nutrition, health, and the environment. I have a quantitative and analytical background in the areas of applied economics and statistical genetics. I leverage my training with experience in machine learning and predictive modeling using SAS, R, and Python to solve problems. I can understand and produce peer reviewed research and discuss the application with a scientist, sales representative, or the customer whose problem ultimately drives the analysis. I can code my own estimators, execute SQL queries, parse text files, and visualize a social network.